First two days in Portugal – a lot of wine!

Combining two Portugal days into one post, this is going to seem like a lot of wine and food, LOL.

We arrived in Portugal yesterday afternoon. When checking in, we asked the hotel concierge for tips on dinner. She suggested Cervejaria Ribadouro, known for its fresh meat and seafood. Here is the restaurant’s display of fresh seafood:

We saw someone being shown their lobster before cooking:

We weren’t so selective. I was happy with the grilled sea bream, a Douro Valley red wine and a delicious dessert of Molotof fluffy pudding with egg custard drizzle on top. We finished off dinner with a red port wine. 

The restaurant was only a 5-minute walk from our hotel. Along the way, we saw a horror film festival going on: Festival Internacional de Cinema de Terror de Lisboa.

As Will shared on Facebook, I became instantly enamored with the tile work on the ground and on buildings. More to come on that, but I noticed it right away on our first night:

This morning, we had a pre-arranged private tour all around Lisbon with an excellent guide named Ricardo. Many beautiful views.

As noted, I fell in love with the tilework on the ground and on the buildings. Ricardo said there is a tile museum here where you can build your own tile. Will is not excited by that prospect, LOL, but I may try and squeeze it in on Tuesday. 

The history of tiles in Portugal goes back hundreds of years and was likely influenced by Moors, the North African people who ruled the Iberian Peninsula for six centuries. Wall tiles became mass produced in the 1700s and 1800s, when the city was rebuilding after the 1755 earthquake and tsunami. The street tiles are black and white marble, which has been mined in Portugal for centuries.

Here are some images of tiles from today:

One of our stops on the tour was the Casa Pastéis de Belém cafe, where we got to taste the namesake custard tarts and watch them being made. Here is a view of the “factory” kitchen:

I unfortunately did not get a photo of us eating them. We ate them too quickly! When you eat them, they are hot out of the oven. Here is the wrapper at least:

They have been made here since 1837. The recipe is very much a secret. If you get them in any other place in Portugal besides Belem, they are called pastel de nata. 

Our tour guide Ricardo was wonderful. Here he is with us and the old city in the backdrop. 

After returning to our hotel, we had a late-ish lunch at a restaurant called Restaurante A Gina. It is in a vacant lot behind a big theatre, and for a few minutes we were confused about where Google maps was taking us. I had my first taste of Portuguese cod, which is a local favorite. In this version, they were in fried mini-footballs. 

We ate in the outdoor garden of the restaurant, and I feel like this neon sign was leftover from the pandemic. It says, “Fever Free.”

After returning to our hotel, Will took a long walk. He shared many of his photos on Facebook already. 

Our next big adventure today was at Lisbon Winery for a two-hour wine and tapas tasting. I’ll first talk about what we ate and drank, then about the other members of our tasting group.

Our sommelier pointed out that the Portuguese love wine – each person consumes an average of 82 bottles a year! Because most of the wineries are small shops, the Portuguese wine export business is limited. Nothing we drank tonight is able to be purchased abroad.

The tasting was accompanied by three different kinds of olive oil – all amazing and in varying flavor profiles – and a generous charcuterie board that included five different kinds of meat, five different kinds of cheeses, fruit slices, jam, crackers, etc.

I don’t remember all of the descriptions, but one of the meats was ham from special pigs that only eat fancy acorns (reminded me of Spain) and two of the cheeses were blends of cow, sheep and goat milk. One blend was very soft and mild, while the other had been aged. Oh, and one of the other cheeses was sheep’s milk only. The sommelier said it is his job to drive an hour to communicate with the farmer who makes it because the farmer doesn’t have a cell phone, text or email. It was all delicious. 

We had five very generous pours of wine. The first was a Vinho Verde, so named for the region in which the wine is grown, not because it is green in color. It was a very good wine to have with bread dipped in olive oil and is made only for the Lisbon Winery establishment. 

The second was a Sonim white wine. It was stronger wine with more complexity, and our sommelier said it was a good white wine for those who prefer dry reds. 

My second favorite was the third wine – an Olho Gordo red made in the Dao region. Only 2400 bottles are produced per year. It had a lightness to it compared to stronger reds like Cab Sav. I could drink that one all day. 

The next one was Will’s favorite from the Douro valley in 2017, one of the best years for Douro valley wines.

Finally, my favorite was a surprise to me – a 35-year-old tawny port wine. This wine costs 110 euros per bottle! I won’t be tasting that again any time soon. Also, it’s almost gone from the market anyway. In the photo below, our sommelier explains that there are two dates to look at for tawny ports — the vintage year of the port and the year it was bottled. This wine was bottled in 2025. 

I was surprised because I normally don’t like sweet wine. This was so smooth, rich and complex, plus it went well with the fruit and jam on the board. Here are all five wines:

Now on to the people we met. There were three others at our table – a young couple from Northern Ireland and a woman from North Carolina. They were delightful table-mates!

Tiffany and Rob, the Irish couple, run a sheep farm and a coffee shop and bunkhouse. Tiffany is American, hailing from Lake Charles, La. They met when both were working in Houston. They told hilarious stories of Tiffany meeting Rob’s family and moving to a small Irish village where many of the people are related. I just kept hearing Netflix TV series episodes with each story –

Tiffany’s first haircut and figuring out a tip, only to get a reputation as a very good tipper;

Rob trying to buy a diamond engagement ring without anyone knowing;

Tiffany and Rob figuring out wedding guest lists;

Tiffany and Rob going to a gynecologist to confirm their first pregnancy without anyone knowing;

The love and care from the whole village when Tiffany gave birth to their second child at the same time Rob’s dad had an aortic aneurysm that he survived. 

The woman from North Carolina was Joanne. She was here to go on a cross country walk with three other women and a guide. She had already completed the walk and was enjoying a couple of days in Lisbon before returning home to her husband and five kids (one of whom is an adult living in Seattle). She has also traveled to India several times and has a trip coming up to Bhutan.

We exchanged book recommendations, shared travel experiences and laughed a lot. We are now Instagram friends, so I guess I will need to start posting more on Instagram. 

If you are ever in Northern Ireland, check out Twilight Cafe and Bunkhouse as a possible lodging option!

The one sad thing is that we did not take any group photos! But we did get a photo of ourselves at the end of the evening:

We weren’t hungry for dinner, so we stopped and had a drink in our hotel restaurant/cocktail bar. What did I have? A glass of 20-year-old port. I told you this post had a lot of wine in it!

And now, we have to get some sleep for an early pickup tomorrow for our all-day tour of Sintra and Cascais.